The Checkup Archive: Sleep

New data released by the CDC to coincide with National Sleep Awareness Week -- which begins today -- paint a less-than-ideal picture of Americans' relationship with sleep. More than 35 percent of nearly 74,571 people surveyed in 2009 reported getting less than 7 hours' sleep a night. (We're supposed to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep daily; children need 10 or 11 hours.) Almost 38 percent admitted to having unintentionally dozed off during the daytime during the 30 days before the survey. Worse yet: Nearly 5 percent of those surveyed had done so while driving.

What hasn't been tallied until this study is the number of non-fatal, but often quite serious, injuries to babies who have been placed in cribs, playpens or bassinets. An average of 26 such injuries per day occurred during the time studied, most (66 percent) involving falls, usually from cribs (83 percent) and most commonly affecting the head or neck (40 percent).

Yesterday's Health & Science section focused on sleep, with stories looking at everything from insomnia to relaxation drinks. Here's a full digest of those articles: An insomniac learns to make the most of getting the least sleep Women are more likely than men to give up sleep to care...

A study in Monday's edition of the journal Pediatrics spells out everything you need to know about energy drinks, particularly the risks they pose to the young people who are most inclined to use them. Read it, and you'll never look at those drinks as benign products again.

Scientists think they have found a clue to why there may be an increased risk for the sleeping disorder narcolepsy among some people who got the H1N1 flu vaccine: The cases appear to have occurred among those carrying a gene that increases the risk for the rare disorder, which causes...